Ethics

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel was one of the first contemporary moral philosophers to challenge Hume’s thesis that reason alone is incapable of motivating moral action. In The Possibility of Altruism (1969), he argued that, if Hume’s thesis is true, then the ordinary idea of prudence—i.e., the idea that one’s future pains and pleasures are just as capable of motivating one to act (and to act now) as are one’s present pains and pleasures—is incoherent. Once one accepts the rationality of prudence, he continued, a very similar line of argument would lead one to accept the rationality of altruism—i.e., the idea that the pains and pleasures of other individuals are just as capable of motivating one to act as are one’s own pains and pleasures. This means that reason alone is capable of motivating moral action; hence, it is unnecessary to appeal to self-interest or to benevolent feelings. In later books, including The View from Nowhere (1986) and The Last Word (1997), Nagel continued to explore these ideas, but he made it clear that he did not support the strong thesis that some reviewers took to be implied by the argument of The Possibility of Altruism—that altruism is not merely rational but rationally required. His position was rather that altruism is one among several courses of action open to rational beings. The American philosopher Christine Korsgaard, in The Sources of Normativity (1996), tried to defend a stronger view along Kantian lines; she argued that one is logically compelled to regard his own humanity—that is, his freedom to reflect on his desires and to act from reasons—as a source of value, and consistency therefore requires him to regard the humanity of others in the same way. Korsgaard’s critics, however, contended that she had failed to overcome the obstacle that prevented Sidgwick from successfully refuting egoism: the objection that the individual’s own good provides him with a motivation for action in a way that the good of others does not.

As this brief survey has shown, the issues that divided Plato and the Sophists were still dividing moral philosophers in the early 21st century. Ironically, the one position that had few defenders among contemporary philosophers was Plato’s view that good refers to an idea or property that exists independently of anyone’s attitudes, desires, or conception of himself and his relation to society—on this point the Sophists appeared to have won out at last. Yet, there remained ample room for disagreement about whether or in what ways reason can bring about moral judgments. There also remained the dispute about whether moral judgments can be true or false. On the other central question of metaethics, the relationship between morality and self-interest, a complete reconciliation between the two continued to prove as elusive as it did for Sidgwick a century before. Normative ethics The debate over consequentialism

Normative ethics seeks to set norms or standards for conduct. The term is commonly used in reference to the discussion of general theories about what one ought to do, a central part of Western ethics since ancient times. Normative ethics continued to occupy the attention of most moral philosophers during the early years of the 20th century, as Moore defended a form of consequentialism and as intuitionists such as W.D. Ross advocated an ethics based on mutually independent duties. The rise of logical positivism and emotivism in the 1930s, however, cast the logical status of normative ethics into doubt: was it not simply a matter of what attitudes one had? Nor was the analysis of language, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries during the 1950s, any more congenial to normative ethics. If philosophy could do no more than analyze words and concepts, how could it offer guidance about what one ought to do? The subject was therefore largely neglected until the 1960s, when emotivism and linguistic analysis were both in retreat and moral philosophers once again began to think about how individuals ought to live.

A crucial question of normative ethics is whether actions are to be judged right or wrong solely on the basis of their consequences. Traditionally, theories that judge actions by their consequences were called “teleological,” and theories that judge actions by whether they accord with a certain rule were called “deontological.” Although the latter term continues to be used, the former has been largely replaced by the more straightforward term “consequentialist.” The debate between consequentialist and deontological theories has led to the development of a number of rival views in both camps. Varieties of consequentialism

The simplest form of consequentialism is classical utilitarianism, which holds that every action is to be judged good or bad according to whether its consequences do more than any alternative action to increase—or, if that is impossible, to minimize any decrease in—the net balance of pleasure over pain in the universe. This view was often called “hedonistic utilitarianism.”

The normative position of G.E. Moore is an example of a different form of consequentialism. In the final chapters of the aforementioned Principia Ethica and also in Ethics (1912), Moore argued that the consequences of actions are decisive for their morality, but he did not accept the classical utilitarian view that pleasure and pain are the only consequences that matter. Moore asked his readers to picture a world filled with all possible imaginable beauty but devoid of any being who can experience pleasure or pain. Then the reader is to imagine another world, as ugly as can be but equally lacking in any being who experiences pleasure or pain. Would it not be better, Moore asked, that the beautiful world rather than the ugly world exist? He was clear in his own mind that the answer was affirmative, and he took this as evidence that beauty is good in itself, apart from the pleasure it brings. He also considered friendship and other close personal relationships to have a similar intrinsic value, independent of their pleasantness. Moore thus judged actions by their consequences, but not solely by the amount of pleasure or pain they produced. Such a position was once called “ideal utilitarianism,” because it is a form of utilitarianism based on certain ideals. From the late 20th century, however, it was more frequently referred to as “pluralistic consequentialism.” Consequentialism thus includes, but is not limited to, utilitarianism.

The position of R.M. Hare is another example of consequentialism. His interpretation of universalizability led him to the view that for a judgment to be universalizable, it must prescribe what is most in accord with the preferences of all those who would be affected by the action. This form of consequentialism is frequently called “preference utilitarianism” because it attempts to maximize the satisfaction of preferences, just as classical utilitarianism endeavours to maximize pleasure or happiness. Part of the attraction of such a view lies in the way in which it avoids making judgments about what is intrinsically good, finding its content instead in the desires that people, or sentient beings generally, do have. Another advantage is that it overcomes the objection, which so deeply troubled Mill, that the production of simple, mindless pleasure should be the supreme goal of all human activity. Against these advantages must be put the fact that most preference utilitarians hold that moral judgments should be based not on the desires that people actually have but rather on those that they would have if they were fully informed and thinking clearly. It then becomes essential to discover what people would desire under these conditions; and, because most people most of the time are less than fully informed and clear in their thoughts, the task is not an easy one.

It may also be noted in passing that Hare claimed to derive his version of utilitarianism from the notion of universalizability, which in turn he drew from moral language and moral concepts. Moore, on the other hand, simply found it self-evident that certain things were intrinsically good. Another utilitarian, the Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart, defended hedonistic utilitarianism by asserting that he took a favourable attitude toward making the surplus of happiness over misery as large as possible. As these differences suggest, consequentialism can be held on the basis of widely differing metaethical views.

Consequentialists may also be separated into those who ask of each individual action whether it will have the best consequences and those who ask this question only of rules or broad principles and then judge individual actions by whether they accord with a good rule or principle. “Rule-consequentialism” developed as a means of making the implications of utilitarianism less shocking to ordinary moral consciousness. (The germ of this approach was contained in Mill’s defense of utilitarianism.) There might be occasions, for example, when stealing from one’s wealthy employer in order to give to the poor would have good consequences. Yet, surely it would be wrong to do so. The rule-consequentialist solution is to point out that a general rule against stealing is justified on consequentialist grounds, because otherwise there could be no security of property. Once the general rule has been justified, individual acts of stealing can then be condemned whatever their consequences because they violate a justifiable rule.

This move suggests an obvious question, one already raised by the account of Kant’s ethics given above: How specific may the rule be? Although a rule prohibiting stealing may have better consequences than no rule at all, would not the best consequences follow from a rule that permitted stealing only in those special cases in which it is clear that stealing will have better consequences than not stealing? But then what would be the difference between “act-consequentialism” and “rule-consequentialism”? In Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (1965), David Lyons argued that if the rule were formulated with sufficient precision to take into account all its causally relevant consequences, rule-utilitarianism would collapse into act-utilitarianism. If rule-utilitarianism is to be maintained as a distinct position, therefore, there must be some restriction on how specific the rule can be so that at least some relevant consequences are not taken into account.

To ignore relevant consequences, however, is to break with the very essence of consequentialism; rule-utilitarianism is therefore not a true form of utilitarianism at all. That, at least, is the view taken by Smart, who derided rule-consequentialism as “rule-worship” and consistently defended act-consequentialism. Of course, when time and circumstances make it awkward to calculate the precise consequences of an action, Smart’s act-consequentialist will resort to rough and ready “rules of thumb” for guidance, but these rules of thumb have no independent status apart from their usefulness in predicting likely consequences. If it is ever clear that one will produce better consequences by acting contrary to the rule of thumb, one should do so. If this leads one to do things that are contrary to the rules of conventional morality, then, according to Smart, so much the worse for conventional morality.

In Moral Thinking, Hare developed a position that combines elements of both act- and rule-consequentialism. He distinguished two levels of thought about what one ought to do. At the critical level, one may reason about the principles that should govern one’s action and consider what would be for the best in a variety of hypothetical cases. The correct answer here, Hare believed, is always that the best action will be the one that has the best consequences. This principle of critical thinking is not, however, well-suited for everyday moral decision making. It requires calculations that are difficult to carry out even under the most ideal circumstances and virtually impossible to carry out properly when one is hurried or when one is liable to be swayed by emotion or self-interest. Everyday moral decisions, therefore, are the proper domain of the intuitive level of moral thought. At this level one does not enter into fine calculations of consequences; instead, one acts according to fundamental moral principles that one has learned and accepted as determining, for practical purposes, whether an act is right or wrong. Just what these moral principles should be is a task for critical thinking. They must be the principles that, when applied intuitively by most people, will produce the best consequences overall, and they must also be sufficiently clear and brief to be made part of the moral education of children. Hare believed that, given the fact that ordinary moral beliefs reflect the experience of many generations, judgments made at the intuitive level will probably not be too different from judgments made by conventional morality. At the same time, Hare’s restriction on the complexity of the intuitive principles is fully consequentialist in spirit.

More recent rule-consequentialists, such as Russell Hardin and Brad Hooker, addressed the problem raised by Lyons by urging that moral rules be fashioned so that they could be accepted and followed by most people. Hardin emphasized that most people make moral decisions with imperfect knowledge and rationality, and he used game theory to show that acting on the basis of rules can produce better overall results than always seeking to maximize utility. Hooker proposed that moral rules be designed to have the best consequences if internalized by the overwhelming majority, now and in future generations. In Hooker’s theory, the rule-consequentialist agent is motivated not by a desire to maximize the good but by a desire to act in ways that are impartially defensible. Objections to consequentialism

Although the idea that one should do what can reasonably be expected to have the best consequences is obviously attractive, consequentialism is open to several objections. As mentioned earlier, one difficulty is that some of the implications of consequentialism clash with settled moral convictions. Consequentialists, it is said, disregard the Kantian principle of treating human beings as ends in themselves. It is also claimed that, because consequentialists must always aim at the good, impartially conceived, they cannot place adequate value on—or even enter into—the most basic human relationships, such as love and friendship, because these relationships require that one be partial to certain other people, preferring their interests to those of strangers. Related to this objection is the claim that consequentialism is too demanding, for it seems to insist that people constantly compare their most innocent activities with other actions they might perform, some of which—such as fighting world poverty—might lead to a greater good, impartially considered. Another objection is that the calculations that consequentialism demands are too complicated to make, especially if—as in many but not all versions of consequentialism—they require one to compare the happiness or preferences of many different people.

Consequentialists defended themselves against these objections in various ways. Some resorted to rule-consequentialism or to a two-level view like Hare’s. Others acknowledged that consequentialism is inconsistent with many widely accepted moral convictions but did not regard this fact as a good reason for rejecting the basic position. A hard-line consequentialist, for example, may argue that the inconsistency is less important than it may seem, because the situations in which it would arise are unlikely ever to occur—e.g., the situation in which one may save the lives of several innocent human beings by killing one innocent human being (in order for this example to count against the consequentialist, one must assume that the killing of the innocent person produces no significant negative consequences other than the death itself). As to the objection that consequentialism is too demanding, some consequentialists simply replied that acting morally is not always an easy thing to do. The difficulty of making interpersonal comparisons of utility was generally acknowledged, but it was also noted that the inexact nature of such comparisons does not prevent people from making them every day, as when a group of friends decides which movie they will see together. An ethics of prima facie duties

In the first third of the 20th century, the chief alternative to utilitarianism was provided by the intuitionists, especially W.D. Ross. Because of this situation, Ross’s normative position was often called “intuitionism,” though it would be more accurate and less confusing to reserve this term for his metaethical view (which, incidentally, was also held by Sidgwick) and to refer to his normative position by the more descriptive label, an “ethics of prima facie duties.”

Ross’s normative ethics consisted of a list of duties, each of which is to be given independent weight: fidelity, reparation, gratitude, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and self-improvement. If an act is in accord with one and only one of these duties, it ought to be carried out. Often, of course, an act will be in accord with two or more duties; e.g., one may respect the duty of gratitude by lending money to a person from whom one once received help, or one may respect the duty of beneficence by loaning the money to others, who happen to be in greater need. This is why the duties are, Ross says, “prima facie” rather than absolute; each duty can be overridden if it conflicts with a more stringent duty.

An ethics structured in this manner may match ordinary moral judgments more closely than a consequentialist ethic, but it suffers from two serious drawbacks. First, how can one be sure that just those duties listed by Ross are independent sources of moral obligation? Ross could respond only that if one examines them closely one will find that these, and these alone, are self-evident. But other philosophers, even other intuitionists, have found that what was self-evident to Ross was not self-evident to them. Second, even if Ross’s list of independent prima facie moral duties is granted, it is still not clear how one is to decide, in a particular situation, when a less-stringent duty should be overridden by a more stringent one. Here, too, Ross had no better answer than an unsatisfactory appeal to intuition. Rawls’s theory of justice

When philosophers again began to take an interest in normative ethics in the 1960s, no theory could rival utilitarianism as a plausible and systematic basis for moral judgments in all circumstances. Yet, many philosophers found themselves unable to accept utilitarianism. One common ground for dissatisfaction was that utilitarianism does not offer any principle of justice beyond the basic idea that everyone’s happiness—or preferences, depending on the form of utilitarianism—counts equally. Such a principle is quite compatible with sacrificing the welfare of a few to the greater welfare of the many—hence the enthusiastic welcome accorded to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice when it appeared in 1971. Rawls offered an alternative to utilitarianism that came close to its rival as a systematic theory of what one ought to do; at the same time, it led to conclusions about justice very different from those of the utilitarians.

Rawls asserted that if people had to choose principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance that restricted what they could know of their own positions in society, they would not choose principles designed to maximize overall utility, because this goal might be attained by sacrificing the rights and interests of groups that they themselves belong to. Instead, they would safeguard themselves against the worst possible outcome, first, by insisting on the maximum amount of liberty compatible with the same liberty for others, and, second, by requiring that any redistribution of wealth and other social goods is justified only if it improves the position of those who are worst-off. This second principle is known as the “maximin” principle, because it seeks to maximize the welfare of those at the minimum level of society. Such a principle might be thought to lead directly to an insistence on the equal distribution of goods, but Rawls pointed out that, if one accepts certain assumptions about the effect of incentives and the benefits that may flow to all from the productive labours of the most talented members of society, the maximin principle is consistent with a considerable degree of inequality.

In the decade following its appearance, A Theory of Justice was subjected to unprecedented scrutiny by moral philosophers throughout the world. Two major questions emerged: Were the two principles of justice soundly derived from the original contract situation? And did the two principles amount, in themselves, to an acceptable theory of justice?

To the first question, the general verdict was negative. Without appealing to specific psychological assumptions about an aversion to risk—and Rawls disclaimed any such assumptions—there was no convincing way in which Rawls could exclude the possibility that the parties to the original contract would choose to maximize average, rather than overall, utility and thus give themselves the best-possible chance of having a high level of welfare. True, each individual making such a choice would have to accept the possibility that he would end up with a very low level of welfare, but that might be a risk worth taking for the sake of a chance at a very high level.

Even if the two principles cannot be validly derived from the original contract, they might be sufficiently attractive to stand on their own. Maximin, in particular, proved to be a popular principle in a variety of disciplines, including welfare economics, a field in which preference utilitarianism had earlier reigned unchallenged. But maximin also had its critics; one of the charges leveled against it was that it could require a society to forgo very great benefits to the vast majority if, for some reason, they would entail some loss, no matter how trivial, to those who are the worst-off. Rights theories

Although appeals to rights have been common since the great 18th-century declarations of the rights of man (see Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; Declaration of Independence), most ethical theorists have treated rights as something that must be derived from more basic ethical principles or else from accepted social and legal practices. However, beginning in the late 20th century, especially in the United States, rights were commonly appealed to as a fundamental moral principle. Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), by the American philosopher Robert Nozick (1938–2002), is an example of such a rights-based theory, though it is mostly concerned with applications in the political sphere and says very little about other areas of normative ethics. Unlike Rawls, who for all his disagreement with utilitarianism was still a consequentialist of sorts, Nozick was a deontologist. The rights to life, liberty, and legitimately acquired property are absolute, he insists; no act that violates them can be justified, no matter what the circumstances or the consequences. Nozick also held that one has no duty to help those in need, no matter how badly off they may be, provided that their neediness is not one’s fault. Thus, governments may appeal to the generosity of the rich, but they may not tax them against their will in order to provide relief for the poor.

Robert Nozick.Harvard University News Office

The American philosopher Ronald Dworkin argued for a different view in Taking Rights Seriously (1977) and subsequent works. Dworkin agreed with Nozick that rights should not be overridden for the sake of improved welfare: rights are, he said, “trumps” over ordinary consequentialist considerations. In Dworkin’s theory, however, the rights to equal concern and respect are fundamental, and observing these rights may require one to assist others in need. Accordingly, Dworkin’s view obliges the state to intervene in many areas to ensure that rights are respected.

In its emphasis on equal concern and respect, Dworkin’s theory was part of a late 20th-century revival of interest in Kant’s principle of respect for persons. This principle, like the value of justice, was often said to be ignored by utilitarians. Rawls invoked Kant’s principle when setting out the underlying rationale of his theory of justice. The principle, however, suffers from a certain vagueness, and attempts to develop it into something more specific that could serve as the basis of a complete ethical theory have not been wholly successful. Natural law ethics

During most of the 20th century, most secular moral philosophers considered natural law ethics to be a lifeless medieval relic, preserved only in Roman Catholic schools of moral theology. In the late 20th century the chief proponents of natural law ethics continued to be Roman Catholic, but they began to defend their position with arguments that made no explicit appeal to religious beliefs. Instead, they started from the claim that there are certain basic human goods that should not be acted against in any circumstances. The list of goods offered by John Finnis in the aforementioned Natural Law and Natural Rights, for example, included life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion. The identification of these goods is a matter of reflection, assisted by the findings of anthropologists. Furthermore, each of the basic goods is regarded as equally fundamental; there is no hierarchy among them.

It would, of course, be possible to hold a consequentialist ethics that identified several basic human goods of equal importance and judged actions by their tendency to produce or maintain these goods. Thus, if life is a good, any action that led to a preventable loss of life would, other things being equal, be wrong. Proponents of natural law ethics, however, rejected this consequentialist approach; they insisted that it is impossible to measure the basic goods against each other. Instead of relying on consequentialist calculations, therefore, natural law ethics assumed an absolute prohibition of any action that aims directly against any basic good. The killing of the innocent, for instance, is always wrong, even in a situation where, somehow, killing one innocent person is the only way to save thousands of innocent people. What is not adequately explained in this rejection of consequentialism is why the life of one innocent person cannot be measured against the lives of a thousand innocent people—assuming that nothing is known about any of the people involved except that they are innocent.

Natural law ethics recognizes a special set of circumstances in which the effect of its absolute prohibitions would be mitigated. This is the situation in which the so-called doctrine of double effect would apply. If a pregnant woman, for example, is found to have a cancerous uterus, the doctrine of double effect allows a doctor to remove it, notwithstanding the fact that such action would kill the fetus. This allowance is made not because the life of the woman is regarded as more valuable than the life of the fetus, but because in removing the uterus the doctor is held not to aim directly at the death of the fetus; instead, its death is an unwanted and indirect side effect of the laudable act of removing a diseased organ. In cases where the only way of saving the woman’s life is by directly killing the fetus, the doctrine provides a different answer. Before the development of modern obstetric techniques, for example, the only way of saving a woman whose fetus became lodged during delivery was to crush the fetus’s skull. Such a procedure was prohibited by the doctrine of double effect, for in performing it the doctor would be directly killing the fetus. This position was maintained even in cases where the death of the mother would certainly also bring about the death of the fetus. In these cases, the claim was made that the doctor who killed the fetus directly would be guilty of murder, but the deaths from natural causes of the mother and the fetus would not be his doing. The example is significant, because it indicates the lengths to which proponents of natural law ethics were prepared to go in order to preserve the absolute nature of their prohibitions. Virtue ethics

In the last two decades of the 20th century, there was a revival of interest in the Aristotelian idea that ethics should be based on a theory of the virtues rather than on a theory of what one ought to do. This revival was influenced by Elizabeth Anscombe and stimulated by Philippa Foot, who in essays republished in Virtues and Vices (1978) explored how acting ethically could be in the interest of the virtuous person. The Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in his pessimistic work After Virtue (1980), lent further support to virtue ethics by suggesting that what he called “the Enlightenment Project” of giving a rational justification of morality had failed. In his view, the only way out of the resulting moral confusion was to ground morality in a tradition, such as the tradition represented by Aristotle and Aquinas.

Virtue ethics, in the view of its proponents, promised a reconciliation of morality and self-interest. If, for example, generosity is a virtue, then a virtuous person will desire to be generous; and the same will hold for the other virtues. If acting morally is acting as a virtuous human being would act, then virtuous human beings will act morally because that is what they are like, and that is what they want to do. But this point again raised the question of what human nature is really like. If virtue ethicists hope to develop an objective theory of the virtues, one that is valid for all human beings, then they are forced to argue that the virtues are based on a common human nature; but, as was noted above in the discussion of naturalism in ethics, it is doubtful that human nature can serve as a standard of what one would want to call morally correct or desirable behaviour. If, on the other hand, virtue ethicists wish to base the virtues on a particular ethical tradition, then they are implicitly accepting a form of ethical relativism that would make it impossible to carry on ethical conversations with other traditions or with those who do not accept any tradition at all.

A rather different objection to virtue ethics is that it relies on an idea of the importance of moral character that is unsupported by the available empirical evidence. There is now a large body of psychological research on what leads people to act morally, and it points to the surprising conclusion that often very trivial circumstances have a decisive impact. Whether a person helps a stranger in obvious need, for example, largely depends on whether he is in a hurry and whether he has just found a small piece of change. If character plays less of a role in determining moral behaviour than is commonly supposed, an ethics that emphasizes virtuous character to the exclusion of all else will be on shaky ground. Feminist ethics

In work published from the 1980s, feminist philosophers argued that the prevalent topics, interests, and modes of argument in moral philosophy reflect a distinctively male point of view, and they sought to change the practice of the discipline to make it less male-biased in these respects. Their challenge raised questions in metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. The feminist approach received considerable impetus from the publication of In a Different Voice (1982), by the American psychologist Carol Gilligan. Gilligan’s work was written in response to research by Lawrence Kohlberg, who claimed to have discovered a universal set of stages of moral development through which normal human beings pass as they mature into adulthood. Kohlberg claimed that children and young adults gradually progress toward more abstract and more impartial forms of ethical reasoning, culminating in the recognition of individual rights. As Gilligan pointed out, however, Kohlberg’s study did not include females. When Gilligan studied moral development in girls and young women, she found less emphasis on impartiality and rights and more on love and compassion for the individuals with whom her subjects had relationships. Although Gilligan’s findings and methodology were criticized, her suggestion that the moral outlook of women is different from that of men led to proposals for a distinctly feminist ethics—an “ethics of care.” As developed in works such as Caring (1984), by the American feminist philosopher Nel Noddings, this approach held that normative ethics should be based on the idea of caring for those with whom one has a relationship, whether that of parent, child, sibling, lover, spouse, or friend. Caring should take precedence over individual rights and moral rules, and obligations to strangers may be limited or nonexistent. The approach emphasized the particular situation, not abstract moral principles.

Not all feminist moral philosophers accepted this approach. Some regarded the very idea that the moral perspective of women is more emotional and less abstract than that of men as tantamount to accepting patriarchal stereotypes of women’s thinking. Others pointed out that, even if there are “feminine” values that women are more likely to hold than men, these values would not necessarily be “feminist” in the sense of advancing the interests of women. Despite these difficulties, feminist approaches led to new ways of thinking in several areas of applied ethics, especially those concerned with professional fields like education and nursing, as well as in areas that male philosophers in applied ethics had tended to neglect, such as the family. Ethical egoism

All of the normative theories considered so far have had a universal focus—i.e., the goods they seek to achieve, the character traits they seek to develop, or the principles they seek to apply pertain equally to everyone. Ethical egoism departs from this consensus, because it asserts that moral decision making should be guided entirely by self-interest. One great advantage of such a position is that it avoids any possible conflict between self-interest and morality. Another is that it makes moral behaviour by definition rational (on the plausible assumption that it is rational to pursue one’s own interests).

Two forms of egoism may be distinguished. The position of the individual egoist may be expressed as: “Everyone should do what is in my interests.” This is indeed egoism, but it is incapable of being universalized (because it makes essential reference to a particular individual); thus, it is arguably not an ethical principle at all. Nor, from a practical perspective, is the individual egoist likely to be able to persuade others to follow a course of action that is so obviously designed to benefit only the person who is advocating it.

Universal egoism is expressed in this principle: “Everyone should do what is in his own interests.” Unlike the principle of individual egoism, this principle is universalizable. Moreover, many self-interested people may be disposed to accept it, because it appears to justify acting on desires that conventional morality might prevent one from satisfying. Universal egoism is occasionally seized upon by popular writers, including amateur historians, sociologists, and philosophers, who proclaim that it is the obvious answer to all of society’s ills; their views are usually accepted by a large segment of the general public. The American writer Ayn Rand is perhaps the best 20th-century example of this type of author. Her version of egoism, as expounded in the novel Atlas Shrugged (1957) and in The Virtue of Selfishness (1965), a collection of essays, was a rather confusing mixture of appeals to self-interest and suggestions of the great benefits to society that would result from unfettered self-interested behaviour. Underlying this account was the tacit assumption that genuine self-interest cannot be served by lying, stealing, cheating, or other similarly antisocial conduct.

As this example illustrates, what starts out as a defense of universal ethical egoism very often turns into an indirect defense of consequentialism: the claim is that everyone will be better off if each person does what is in his own interest. The ethical egoist is virtually compelled to make this claim, because otherwise there is a paradox in the fact that he advocates ethical egoism at all. Such advocacy would be contrary to the very principle of ethical egoism, unless the egoist stands to benefit from others’ becoming ethical egoists. If his interests are such that they would be threatened by others’ pursuing their own interests, then he would do better to advocate altruism and to keep his belief in egoism a secret.

Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that everyone will be better off if each person does what is in his own interests is incorrect. This is shown by thought experiments known as “prisoner’s dilemmas,” which played an increasingly important role in discussions of ethical theory in the late 20th century (see game theory). The basic prisoner’s dilemma is an imaginary situation in which two prisoners are accused of a crime. If one confesses and the other does not, the prisoner who confesses will be released immediately and the prisoner who does not will be jailed for 20 years. If neither confesses, each will be held for a few months and then released. And if both confess, each will be jailed for 15 years. It is further stipulated that the prisoners cannot communicate with each other. If each of them decides what to do purely on the basis of self-interest, he will realize that it is better for him to confess than not to confess, no matter what the other prisoner does. Paradoxically, when each prisoner acts selfishly—i.e., as an egoist—the result is that both are worse off than they would have been if each had acted cooperatively.

Although the example might seem bizarre, analogous situations occur quite frequently on a larger scale. Consider the dilemma of the commuter. Suppose that each commuter finds his private car a little more convenient than the bus, but when each commuter drives a car, the traffic becomes extremely congested. So everyone is better off in the situation where everyone takes the bus than in the situation where everyone drives a car. Because private cars are somewhat more convenient than buses, however, and because the overall volume of traffic is not appreciably affected by one more car on the road, it is in the interests of each commuter to continue driving. At least on the collective level, therefore, egoism is self-defeating—a conclusion well brought out by the English philosopher Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (1984).

The fact that ethical egoism is collectively self-defeating does not mean that it is wrong. An ethical egoist might still maintain that it is right for each person to pursue his own interests, even if this would bring about worse consequences for everyone. His position would not be self-contradictory, though it would be “self-effacing,” since it would require him to avoid promoting egoism in public and to keep his true ethical beliefs a secret. Applied ethics

The most striking development in the study of ethics since the mid-1960s was the growth of interest among philosophers in practical, or applied, ethics—i.e., the application of normative ethical theories to practical problems. This is not, admittedly, a totally new departure. From Plato onward, moral philosophers have concerned themselves with practical questions, including suicide, the exposure of infants, the treatment of women, and the proper behaviour of public officials. Christian philosophers, notably Augustine and Aquinas, examined with great care such matters as when a war is just, whether it is ever right to tell a lie, and whether a Christian woman does wrong by committing suicide to save herself from rape. Hobbes had an eminently practical purpose in writing his Leviathan, and Hume wrote about the ethics of suicide. The British utilitarians were very much concerned with practical problems; indeed, they considered social reform to be the aim of their philosophy. Thus, Bentham wrote on electoral and prison reform and animal rights, and Mill discussed the power of the state to interfere with the liberty of its citizens, the status of women, capital punishment, and the right of one state to invade another to prevent it from committing atrocities against its own people.

Nevertheless, during the first six decades of the 20th century, moral philosophers largely neglected applied ethics—something that now seems all but incredible, considering the traumatic events through which most of them lived. The most notable exception, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), seems to have regarded his writings on ethical topics as largely separate from his philosophical work and did not attempt to develop his ethical views in any systematic or rigorous fashion.

The prevailing view of this period was that moral philosophy is quite separate from “moralizing,” a task best left to preachers. What was not generally considered was whether moral philosophers could, without merely preaching, make an effective contribution to discussions of practical issues involving difficult ethical questions. The value of such work began to be widely recognized only during the 1960s, when first the U.S. civil rights movement and subsequently the Vietnam War and the growth of student political activism started to draw philosophers into discussions of the ethical issues of equality, justice, war, and civil disobedience.

Applied ethics soon became part of the philosophy curriculum of most universities in many different countries. Here it is not possible to do more than briefly mention some of the major areas of applied ethics and point to the issues that they raise. Equality

Since much of the early impetus for the 20th-century revival of applied ethics came from the U.S. civil rights movement, topics such as equality, human rights, and justice were prominent from the beginning. The initial focus, especially in the United States, was on racial and sexual equality. Since there was a consensus that outright discrimination against women and members of racial minority groups (notably African Americans) is wrong, the centre of attention soon shifted to reverse discrimination: is it acceptable to favour women and members of racial minority groups for jobs and enrollment in universities and colleges because they have been discriminated against in the past? (See affirmative action.)

Inequality between the sexes was another early focus of discussion. Does equality here mean ending as far as possible all differences in the sex roles, or could there be equal status for different roles? There was a lively debate—both between feminists and their opponents and, on a different level, between feminists themselves—about what a society without sexual inequality would be like. Feminist philosophers were also involved in debates about abortion and about new methods of reproduction. These topics will be covered separately below.

Until the late 20th century, most philosophical discussions of justice and equality were limited in scope to a single society. Even Rawls’s theory of justice, for example, had nothing to say about the distribution of wealth between societies, an issue that could have made acceptance of his maximin principle much more difficult. In the 1990s philosophers began to think about the moral implications of the vast inequality in wealth between the leading industrialized countries and the countries of the developing world, some of which were afflicted with widespread famine and disease. What obligations, if any, do the citizens of affluent countries have to those who are starving? In Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (1996), the American philosopher Peter Unger made a strong case for the view that any person of reasonable means who neglects to send money to organizations that work to reduce global poverty is thereby doing something very seriously wrong. The German-born philosopher Thomas Pogge, in World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (2002), argued that affluent countries are responsible for increasing the poverty of developing countries and thus for causing millions of deaths annually. In one of his late works, The Law of Peoples (1999), Rawls himself turned to the relations between societies, though his conclusions were more conservative than those of Unger and Pogge. Animals

There is one issue related to equality in which philosophers have led, rather than followed, a social movement. In the early 1970s, a group of young Oxford-based philosophers began to question the assumption that the moral status of nonhuman animals is automatically inferior to that of humans—as well as the conclusion usually drawn from it, that it is morally permissible for humans to use nonhuman animals as food, even in circumstances where they could nourish themselves well and efficiently without doing so. The publication in 1972 of Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans, edited by Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch and John Harris, was followed three years later by Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and then by a flood of articles and books that established the issue as a part of applied ethics. At the same time, these writings provided a philosophical basis for the animal rights movement, which had a considerable effect on attitudes and practices toward animals in many countries.

Peter Singer, 2004.Denise Applewhite/Princeton University

Most philosophical work on the issue of animal rights advocated radical changes in the ways in which humans treat animals. Some philosophers, however, defended the status quo, or at least something close to it. In The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice (1992), the British philosopher Peter Carruthers argued that humans have moral obligations only to those beings who can participate in a hypothetical social contract. The obvious difficulty with such an approach is that it proves too much: if humanity has no obligations to animals, then it also has no obligations to the minority of humans with severe intellectual disabilities or to future generations of humans, since they too cannot reciprocate. Another British philosopher, Roger Scruton, supported both animal welfare and the right of humans to use animals, at least in circumstances that entailed some benefit to the animals in question. Thus, in Animal Rights and Wrongs (2000) he supported foxhunting, because it encourages humans to protect the habitat in which foxes live, but condemned modern “factory” farms, because they do not provide even a minimally acceptable life for the animals raised in them. (See also animal rights; vegetarianism.) Environmental ethics

Environmental issues raise a host of difficult ethical questions, including the ancient question of the nature of intrinsic value. Whereas many philosophers in the past have agreed that human experiences have intrinsic value—and the utilitarians at least have always accepted that the pleasures and pains of nonhuman animals are of some intrinsic significance—this does not show why it is so bad if dodoes become extinct or a rainforest is cut down. Are these things to be regretted only because of the experiences that would be lost to humans or other sentient beings? Or is there more to it than that? From the late 20th century, some philosophers defended the view that trees, rivers, species (considered apart from the individual animals of which they consist), and perhaps even ecological systems as a whole have a value independent of the instrumental value they may have for humans or nonhuman animals. There is, however, no agreement on what the basis for this value should be.

Concern for the environment also raises the question of obligations to future generations. How much do human beings living now owe to those not yet born? For those who hold a social-contract ethics or for the ethical egoist, the answer would seem to be: nothing. Although humans existing in the present can benefit those existing in the future, the latter are unable to reciprocate. Most other ethical theories, however, do give some weight to the interests of future generations. Utilitarians would not think that the fact that members of future generations do not yet exist is any reason for giving less consideration to their interests than to the interests of present generations—provided that one can be certain that future generations will exist and will have interests that will be affected by what one does. In the case of, say, the storage of radioactive wastes or the emission of gases that contribute to climate change, it seems clear that what present generations do will indeed affect the interests of generations to come. Most philosophers agree that these are important moral issues. Climate change in particular has been conceived of as a question of global equity: how much of a scarce resource (the capacity of the atmosphere safely to absorb waste gases produced by human activity) may each country use? Are industrialized countries justified in using far more of this resource, on a per capita basis, than developing countries, considering that the human costs of climate change will fall more heavily on developing countries because they cannot afford the measures needed to mitigate them?

These questions become even more complex when one considers that the size of future generations can be affected by government population policies and by other less-formal attitudes toward population growth and family size. The notion of overpopulation conceals a philosophical issue that was ingeniously explored in Parfit’s aforementioned Reasons and Persons. What is optimum population? Is it the population size at which the average level of welfare will be as high as possible? Or is it the size at which the total amount of welfare—the average multiplied by the number of people—is as great as possible? There were decisive objections to the average view, but the total view also had counterintuitive consequences. Much thought was given to finding alternatives that do not create an obligation to bring more people into the world as long as they will be happy, as the total view implies, or happier than average, as the average view implies. But the alternatives suggested had their own difficulties, and the question remained one of the most baffling conundrums in applied ethics. (See also environmentalism.) War and peace

The Vietnam War ensured that discussions of the justness of war and the legitimacy of conscription and civil disobedience were prominent in early writings in applied ethics. There was considerable support for civil disobedience against unjust aggression and against unjust laws even in a democracy.

With the end of conscription in the United States and of the war itself two years later (1975), philosophers turned their attention to the problem of nuclear weapons. One central question was whether the strategy of nuclear deterrence could be morally acceptable, given that it treats civilian populations as potential nuclear targets. In the 1990s the massacres of civilians in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda raised the issue mentioned above in connection with Mill: the right of one or more countries to intervene in the internal affairs of another country solely because it is engaged in crimes against its own citizens. This issue was taken up within discussions of broader questions dealing with human rights, including the question of whether the insistence that all countries respect human rights is an expression of a universal human value or merely a form of Western “cultural imperialism.” Abortion, euthanasia, and the value of human life

A number of ethical questions are concerned with the endpoints of the human life span. The question of whether abortion or the use of human embryos as sources of stem cells can be morally justified was exhaustively discussed in popular contexts, where the answer was often taken to depend directly on the answer to the further question: “When does human life begin?” Many philosophers argued that the latter question was the wrong one to ask, since no conclusion of a specifically moral character follows directly from the scientific fact that human life begins at conception or at some other time. A better approach, according to these philosophers, is to ask what it is that makes killing a human being wrong and then to consider whether these characteristics, whatever they might be, apply to the earliest stages of human life. Although there was no generally agreed-upon answer, some philosophers presented surprisingly strong arguments to the effect that not only the embryo and the fetus but even the newborn infant has no right to life. This position was defended by the British philosopher Jonathan Glover in Causing Death and Saving Lives (1977) and in more detail by the Canadian-born philosopher Michael Tooley in Abortion and Infanticide (1983).

Such views were hotly contested, especially by those who claimed that all human life, irrespective of its characteristics, is sacrosanct. The task for those who defended the sanctity of human life was to explain why human life, no matter what its characteristics, is specially worthy of protection. Explanation could no doubt be provided in terms of traditional Christian doctrines such as that all humans are made in the image of God or that all humans have an immortal soul. In the philosophical debate, however, opponents of abortion and embryo research eschewed religious arguments of this kind, though without finding a convincing secular alternative.

Somewhat similar issues were raised by the practice of euthanasia when it is nonvoluntary, as in the case of severely disabled newborn infants (see below Bioethics). Voluntary euthanasia, on the other hand, could be defended on the distinct ground that the state should not interfere with the free, informed choices of its citizens in matters that do not cause harm to others. (The same argument was often invoked in defense of the pro-choice position in the abortion controversy. But it was much weaker in this case, because it presupposed what it needed to prove: namely, that the fetus does not count as a person—or at least not as a person to the extent that the pregnant woman does.) Critics of voluntary euthanasia emphasized practical matters such as the difficulty of maintaining adequate safeguards; their chief objection was that the practice would lead via a “slippery slope” to nonvoluntary euthanasia and eventually to the compulsory involuntary killing of those the state considers socially undesirable. The open practice of voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands followed by its subsequent legalization there in 2001 provided an opportunity to test this claim. To date, studies of the rate of euthanasia in that country do not show any evidence of a slippery slope, but the absence of comparable studies in other countries means that the facts remain in dispute. Bioethics

Ethical issues raised by abortion and euthanasia are part of the subject matter of bioethics, which deals with the ethical dimensions of new developments in medicine and the biological sciences. Inherently interdisciplinary in scope, the field benefits from the contributions of professionals outside philosophy, including physicians, lawyers, scientists, and theologians. From the late 20th century, centres for research in bioethics were established in many countries, and medical schools added the discussion of ethical issues in medicine to their curricula. Governments sought guidance in setting public policy in particularly controversial areas of bioethics by appointing special committees to provide ethical advice.

Several key themes run through the subjects covered by bioethics. One is whether the quality of a human life can be a reason for ending it or for deciding not to take steps to prolong it. Since medical science can now keep alive severely disabled infants who would otherwise die soon after birth, pediatricians are regularly faced with this question. A major controversy erupted in the United States in 1982 when a doctor agreed to follow the wishes of the parents of an infant with Down syndrome by not carrying out the surgery necessary to save the baby’s life. The doctor’s decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of Indiana, and the baby died before an appeal could be made to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ensuing discussion and the rules subsequently promulgated by the administration of President Ronald Reagan made it less likely that in the United States an infant with Down syndrome would be denied medically feasible lifesaving surgery, but other countries treated such cases differently. Moreover, in virtually every country, including the United States, there were situations in which doctors decided, on quality-of-life grounds, not to sustain the life of an infant with extremely poor prospects.

Even those who defended the doctrine of the sanctity of all human life did not always insist that doctors use extraordinary means to prolong it. But the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means, like that between acts and omissions, was problematic. Critics asserted that the wishes of the patient or, if these cannot be ascertained, the quality of the patient’s life provides a more relevant basis for a decision than the nature of the means to be used.

Another central theme is that of patient autonomy. This issue arose not only in connection with voluntary euthanasia but also in the area of human experimentation. It was generally agreed that patients must give informed consent to any experimental procedures performed on them. But how much information should they be given? The problem was particularly acute in the case of randomly controlled trials, which require that patients agree to courses of treatment that may consist entirely of placebos. When experiments were carried out using human subjects in developing countries, the difficulties and the potential for unethical practices become greater still. In 2000 the World Medical Association, responding to reports of abuses, revised its Declaration of Helsinki, which sets out the ethical principles that should govern medical research involving human subjects.

The allocation of medical resources became a life-and-death issue in the late 1940s, when hospitals in the United States first obtained dialysis machines and had to choose which of their patients suffering from kidney disease would be allowed to use them. Some bioethicists argued that the decision should be made on a “first come, first served” basis, whereas others thought it obvious that younger patients or patients with dependents should be given preference. Although dialysis machines are no longer so scarce, the availability of various other exotic, expensive lifesaving techniques is limited; hence, the search for rational principles of distribution continues. This problem was particularly complicated in the United States, where access to such techniques often depended on the business decisions of private health insurance firms.

Further advances in biology and medicine gave rise to new issues in bioethics, some of which received considerable public attention. In 1978 the birth of the first human being to be conceived outside a human body initiated a debate about the morality of in vitro fertilization. This soon led to questions about the freezing of human embryos and about what should be done with them if the parents should die. Controversies also arose about the practice of surrogate motherhood, in which a woman is impregnated with the sperm of the husband of an infertile couple (or in some cases with an embryo fertilized in vitro) and then surrenders the resulting baby, usually performing this service for a fee. Is this different from selling a baby? If so, how? If a woman who has agreed to act as a surrogate mother changes her mind and decides to keep the baby, should she be allowed to do so?

From the late 1990s, by far the most controversial issue in bioethics was cloning (see clone). The first successful cloning of a mammal, Dolly the sheep, in 1996 conjured up in the public imagination alarming visions of armies of identical human clones, and many legislatures hastened to prohibit the reproductive cloning of human beings. But the public’s reaction resulted more from ignorance and distaste than reflection (which the popular news media did little to encourage). Some bioethicists suggested that in a free society there are no good reasons—apart from the risk that a cloned human may suffer from genetic abnormalities—for cloning to be prohibited. Others viewed cloning as a violation of human dignity, because it would mean that human beings could be designed by other humans. This objection was forcefully stated by the bioethicist Leon Kass, who appealed to what he called, in the title of a 1997 essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”

The culmination of such advances in techniques for influencing human reproduction will be the mastery of genetic engineering. Already in the late 20th century, some couples in the United States paid substantial sums for eggs from women with outstanding test scores at elite colleges. (Payment for eggs or sperm was illegal in most other countries.) Prenatal testing for genetic defects was also common, especially in older pregnant women, many of whom terminated the pregnancy when a defect was discovered. Some genetic testing can now be done in embryos in vitro, before implantation. As more genetic tests become available—not only for defects but perhaps eventually for robust health, desirable personality traits, attractive physical characteristics, or intellectual abilities that are under strong genetic influence—humanity will face the question posed by the title of Jonathan Glover’s probing book What Sort of People Should There Be? (1984). Perhaps this will be the most challenging issue for ethics in the remainder of the 21st century. Peter Singer

Citation Information

Article Title: Ethics

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 12 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy

Access Date: August 16, 2019

Additional Reading General works

For an introduction to the major theories of ethics, the reader should consult James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. (2003), an excellent brief textbook. Simon Blackburn, Being Good (2001), is another short introduction to the issues. Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (1991, reissued 2000), is a collection of specially written essays that covers many of the topics discussed more briefly in this article, while the same editor’s Ethics (1994) is an anthology of classical and modern writings. James Rachels (ed.), Ethical Theory (1998), is a two-volume collection, the first volume covering metaethics, the second normative ethics. Louis Pojman (ed.), Ethical Theory, 4th ed. (2002), is another useful collection of previously published writings. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd ed., 3 vol. (2001), is a comprehensive reference work. Origins of ethics

Joyce O. Hertzler, The Social Thought of the Ancient Civilizations (1936, reprinted 1975), is a wide-ranging collection. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, new ed. (1989, reissued 1999), is brilliant but often misunderstood by careless readers. Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994); and Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1996), both provide fuller evolutionary accounts of the origins of ethics. On psychology, the neurosciences, and ethics, the reader should consult Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994, reissued 2000); Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail,” Psychological Review, 108(4):814–834 (October 2001); and J. Greene et al., “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” Science, 293(5537):2105–08 (September 14, 2001). History of Western ethics

Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers, 6th enlarged ed. (1931, reissued 1996), is a triumph of scholarship and brevity, though now a little dated. William Edward Hartpole Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 3rd rev. ed., 2 vol. (1877, reprinted 1975), is another classic. Among more recent histories, Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 2nd ed. (1998, reissued 2002), is a readable personal view. Vernon J. Bourke, History of Ethics (1968, reissued in 2 vol., 1970), is remarkably comprehensive. J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (1998), is a scholarly history of modern moral philosophy. Warren Ashby, A Comprehensive History of Western Ethics (1997), is broader in scope, going well beyond the usual array of philosophers. Robert L. Arrington, Western Ethics: An Historical Introduction (1998), contains chapters on the major ethical thinkers from Plato onward. Timothy Shanahan and Robin Wang (eds.), Reason and Insight: Western and Eastern Perspectives on the Pursuit of Moral Wisdom (1996), offers introductory accounts of the major ethical traditions of both East and West, supplemented by extracts from the key texts. Indian ethics

The reader should begin with Sue Hamilton, Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001). Surama Dasgupta, Development of Moral Philosophy in India, 2nd ed. (1994), is a clear discussion of the various schools. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (2000), is a substantial account of that tradition. Chinese ethics

Hyun Hochsmann, On Philosophy in China (2004), is a general introduction and overview. A standard work is Fung Yu-Lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. from the Chinese by Derk Bodde, 2 vol. (1952–53, reprinted 1983). Also recommended are Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. from the French by J.R. Foster and Charles Hartman, 2nd ed. (1996, reissued 2002); and A.C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (1989). Ancient Greek and Roman ethics

Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, rev. ed. (1982, reissued 1999), treats Greek ethics before Socrates. Introductions to the ethical thought of this period include Pamela M. Huby, Greek Ethics (1967, reissued 1998); Christopher Rowe, An Introduction to Greek Ethics (1976); and William J. Prior, Virtue and Knowledge: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Ethics (1991). Early and medieval Christian ethics

Arthur Stephen McGrade, R. John Kilcullen, and M.S. Kempshall (eds.), Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts (2000), is a selection of major texts from the period. On the history of the transition from Roman ethics to Christianity, Lecky’s classic work, cited above, is splendid reading. Henry Chadwick, Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (1986, reissued 2001), is a useful study. John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory (1998), treats the most influential Scholastic writer on ethics. The British tradition from Hobbes to the utilitarians

Selections of the major texts of this period are brought together in D.D. Raphael (ed.), British Moralists, 1650–1800, 2 vol. (1969, reissued 1991); and in D.H. Monro (ed.), A Guide to the British Moralists (1972). Useful introductions to separate writers include J. Kemp, Ethical Naturalism (1970), on Hobbes and Hume; W.D. Hudson, Ethical Intuitionism (1967), on the intuitionists from Cudworth to Price and the debate with the moral sense school; and J.B. Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (1977, reissued 2000). C.D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930, reissued 2000), includes clear accounts of the ethics of Butler, Hume, and Sidgwick. J.L. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory (1980, reissued 1993), brilliantly traces the relevance of Hume’s work to current disputes about the nature of ethics. The continental tradition from Spinoza to Nietzsche

Among the easier introductory studies are Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (2001); Roger J. Sullivan, An Introduction to Kant’s Ethics (1994); Michael Tanner, Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (2001); and Peter Singer, Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (2001), and Marx: A Very Short Introduction (2000). Broad’s work, cited above, contains readable accounts of the ethics of both Spinoza and Kant. Metaethics

Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers (eds.), Readings in Ethical History, 2nd ed. (1970), contains the most important pieces of writing on ethics from the first half of the 20th century. The key articles on moral realism, expressivism, projectivism, and other positions in the contemporary debate can be found in Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches (1997). Normative ethics

The best short statement of an act-utilitarian position is J.J.C. Smart’s contribution to J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973, reprinted 1987). Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism and Beyond (1982, reissued 1996), is a collection of essays on the difficulties of the utilitarian position. Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (1989), scrutinizes the objection that consequentialism is too demanding. H.J. McCloskey, Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics (1969), is a restatement of the ethic of prima facie duties with some modifications.

Roslind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (1999), is an informative study. The psychological research against the view that character determines ethical conduct is ably assembled in John M. Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (2002). Egoism as a theory of rationality is discussed in David P. Gauthier (ed.), Morality and Rational Self-Interest (1970); and Ronald D. Milo (ed.), Egoism and Altruism (1973). Applied ethics

The best examples of applied ethics are to be found in journal articles, particularly in Philosophy and Public Affairs (quarterly). Ruth Chadwick (ed.), Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, 4 vol. (1998), is a major reference source. There are many anthologies of representative samples of such writings. Among the better ones are Lawrence Hinman (ed.), Contemporary Moral Issues, 2nd ed. (2000); John Arthur (ed.), Morality and Moral Controversies, 6th ed. (2002); and Hugh Lafollette (ed.), Ethics in Practice, 2nd ed. (2002).

There are many books and collections on specific topics. Alison Jaggar and Iris Marion Young (eds.), A Companion to Feminist Philosophy (1999), contains probing discussions. The moral obligations of the wealthy to the starving are discussed in William Aiken and Hugh Lafollette (eds.), World Hunger and Morality, 2nd ed. (1996).

Over the last 30 years the ethics of the treatment of animals has given rise to an extensive literature. The best brief account is David Degrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (2002). The same author’s Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (1996) is a more extended discussion of the issues. Books arguing for radical change include Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (1983, reissued 2004); and James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (1990). R.G. Frey, Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics (1983), resists these arguments. Marc Bekoff (ed.), Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Welfare (1998), is a valuable reference work.

Essays dealing with ethical issues raised by concern for the environment are collected in Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (2000); and Robert Elliot, Environmental Ethics (1995). Lawrence E. Johnson, A Morally Deep World: An Essay on Moral Significance and Environmental Ethics (1991); and Gary E. Varner, In Nature’s Interests?: Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics (1998, reissued 2002), are full-length studies of the problem of intrinsic value in nature. Problems concerning future generations are discussed in R.I. Sikora and Brian Barry (eds.), Obligations to Future Generations (1978, reissued 1996).

Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (2000), is a fine study of the morality of war. Nigel Blake and Kay Pole (eds.), Objections to Nuclear Defence: Philosophers on Deterrence (1984), and Dangers of Deterrence: Philosophers on Nuclear Strategy (1983), are collections of philosophical writings on nuclear war. Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (1999), contains a philosopher’s reflections on war, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.

There is an immense amount of literature on abortion, though of various philosophical depth. L.W. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory (1981), is a notable treatment. Contrasting views are presented in Baruch A. Brody, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View (1975); and Norman M. Ford, The Prenatal Person: Ethics from Conception to Birth (2002). Susan Dwyer and Joel Feinberg (eds.), The Problem of Abortion, 3rd ed. (1997), is a good collection of essays. General discussions of sanctity-of-life issues, including abortion and euthanasia, are Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle, Life and Death with Liberty and Justice: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate (1979); Helga Kuhse, The Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine in Medicine: Critique (1987); and Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics (1994). The treatment of severely handicapped infants is discussed in Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (1985, reissued 1994). Margaret Pabst Battin, The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life (1994), discusses voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

A comprehensive introduction to bioethics is Nancy S. Jecker, Albert R. Jonsen, and Robert A. Pearlman (eds.), Bioethics: An Introduction to the History, Methods, and Practice (1997). Warren Thomas Reich (ed.), Encyclopedia of Bioethics, rev. ed. (1998), is the standard reference work for the field. Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th ed. (2001), is a very widely used textbook. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds.), A Companion to Bioethics (1998), is a collection of original essays introducing the major topics in the field. Anthologies of previously published writings on issues in bioethics include Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds.), Bioethics: An Anthology (1999); and David Degrazia (ed.), Biomedical Ethics, 5th ed. (2001). Gregory E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics, 4th ed. (2004), is a selection of readings on the real-life cases that have focused attention on issues in bioethics. The philosophical issues underlying genetic engineering and other methods of altering the human organism are treated in Allen Buchanan et al., From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (2000). Gregory E. Pence, Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning? (1998), argues that there is less to fear from cloning than many imagine. A range of different views are presented in Arlene Judith Klotzko (ed.), The Cloning Sourcebook (2001). The future that genetics will make possible is examined in Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family (1997, reissued 2002). Peter Singer